


The Thing Between Us

by WorryinglyInnocent



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: A Monthly Rumbelling, AU, F/M, Family Fluff, Single Parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-10-04
Packaged: 2019-07-25 06:11:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16191686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WorryinglyInnocent/pseuds/WorryinglyInnocent
Summary: Belle and Gold are two single parents whose sons are best friends. One day, they decide to take a chance on the feelings that have been brewing between them for a while and see if they can find love again.Written for the @a-monthly-rumbelling prompt: “This can’t keep happening.”





	The Thing Between Us

 

“This can’t keep happening.”

Cameron Gold looks at the wonky guttering that runs around the side of the cottage, then down at the two contrite boys in front of him, then back up at the guttering. It appears that they have been even more exuberant than usual in their attempts to hit baseballs as high as possible, as the brickwork around the guttering looks to be distinctly chipped as well.

“Sorry, Papa.”

“Sorry, Mr Gold.”

Although it is at least the fourth time that this has happened, Gold cannot bring himself to be angry at the boys. He’s so glad that Bae has found a playmate his own age that he’s willing to overlook the odd bit of repair work that might result from their games.

All of the other children at school give Bae a wide berth due to his father’s reputation, with the exception of Gideon French. Gideon, along with his irrepressible mother, is newly arrived to the town and refuses point blank to believe the rumours that fly around about the nasty landlord who rented them their charming cottage.

Bae and Gideon became fast friends within just a few minutes of their meeting, and whilst Gold tells himself he likes the fact that Bae has a friend now for his son’s sake, there is also the slightly less noble reason that he has been trying to keep hidden and deny himself for so long. That reason is Gideon’s mother.

Belle French is the town’s new librarian, recently divorced and looking to start a new life in a quiet town where her son can grow up safe and happy away from the toxic environment of his first few years. Although she does not like to talk about her marriage and the circumstances of it ending, Gold never fails to be amazed by her positive attitude and sunny disposition, as if she is finally seeing light after a long period of darkness, and she is determined to revel in it as much as she can.

Belle is a marvel, and that, thinks Gold darkly, is precisely why he has to keep his distance. After everything that she’s been through, the last thing that she needs is a bitter old man like him.

His aunts keep telling him to think positively. They have so much potential as a couple, they say. Two single parents who have known the hardships of bad marriages and come triumphantly out of the other side. Their boys are already best friends, so why not give it a try?

Gold always shakes his head in the face of these encouragements. It is because their circumstances are so similar that he is convinced that they would never work as a pair. They already know each other’s pain too intimately without knowing anything else about each other, and neither of them want to relive those past mistakes.

That is why he keeps his distance, playing the part of the aloof pawnbroker that everyone in the town believes him to be and that Belle refuses to see him as. If she looks a little hurt when he politely declines her offer of tea every time he comes to collect Bae from a playdate at the cottage, then he tries to ignore it, reasoning that it’s for her own good, and that the momentary sting in his rejection if her will fade with time.

Eventually she will stop asking and Gold will stop worrying about accidentally giving in to the desire to spend more time with her and saying yes.

“Oh boys…”

Belle’s voice comes out of the cottage front door and she herself appears but a moment later, looking up at the wonky guttering in dismay.

“It was an accident, Mama!” Gideon protests.

Belle sighs. “I know, Gid. I know.”

She turns to Gold. “I didn’t hear your car, Mr Gold. I guess the time must have got away from me again. Would you like to come in for a cup of tea?”

Gold gives a tight a little smile that he can tell doesn’t quite reach his eyes and screws up every last bit of self-control that he has.

“No thank you, Ms French,” he says. “I just stopped by to collect Bae, that’s all. I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“It’s no imposition, really. The kettle’s just boiled.”

Oh, well, in that case, say his aunts in the back of his mind. He just shakes his head against their imagined voices.

“No thank you, Ms French.”

Belle looks crestfallen and a little defeated, but she doesn’t let it show in her voice as she calls to the two boys.

“Gid, why don’t you take Bae inside and pack some of the cookies into the green Tupperware so that he can take them home.”

The boys race indoors, and Gold has to smile at their enthusiasm. Bae had been positively bouncing on the spot as he’d told his father that he and Gideon were going to get Ms French to show them how to make her snickerdoodle cookies that afternoon.

It is only once the boys’ natural vibrancy is gone from the scene that Gold realises that he is now alone with Belle, and he has no idea what to do or say. He tries to avoid this state of affairs as much as possible. It only ends up making things awkward for the both of them.

“This can’t keep happening.”

Belle’s voice breaks the silence, and Gold looks up at the wonky guttering again.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’ll get Dove to come out and take a look at it first thing tomorrow morning. I keep telling Bae to be more careful with his ball games, and I keep hoping that it will stick one day.”

“I’m not talking about the guttering.”

Gold looks at Belle, who is looking straight at him with piercing blue eyes that he’s certain can see into his very soul. The intensity in her gaze is unnerving and more than a little attractive.

“What are you talking about?”

“You keep pushing me away,” she replies. “Telling yourself that you’re doing it for my own good when really you’re just too afraid to take a chance. It’s just tea, Mr Gold. I’m not asking for the moon on a string.”

It cuts too close to home and Gold puts on the cold mask of indifference that he uses when paying visits to those with overdue rent. He can’t let her see that she has seen straight through him.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he sneers.

Belle just raises an eyebrow. Once again, she can penetrate his pretence.

“Oh, I think you do,” she says. “I can see it in your face every time you decline.”

Something in her face and voice softens then, and she smiles, half-extending a hand towards him.

“Don’t you think that, having both been through what we have and having come out of it in one piece, we shouldn’t be wasting our time denying ourselves something that we both want? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a fresh start. A happy beginning.”

Her words make so much sense that they’re intoxicating, and Gold wants nothing more than to agree with them. The voices in the back of his mind that sound like his aunts are asking a simple question. Why? Why not agree with her? Why keep up this denial that is only making both of them miserable out of a misguided desire to prevent himself from doing exactly that?

“Ms French…”

“Belle.”

“Belle… I’m a divorced single father with a bad reputation a mile wide.”

“I’m a divorced single mother who has yet to see any evidence of this reputation.”

“I’m old and lame.”

“What makes you think I’m young and whole?”

That stops him short, because it makes him realise just how little he really does know about Belle, and how much he would like to know, both the rough and the smooth, the good and the bad. She has never been anything other than young and whole in his eyes, and in learning that she does not think of herself so, it has thrown a mirror up in front of him.

The realisation must show in his face because Belle smiles, a genuine and warm smile, and she extends her hand again.

“Would you like to come in for a cup of tea, Cameron?” she asks again. “And perhaps a cookie if there are any left?”

Slowly, unsurely, but with that strange and foreign sensation more commonly known as _hope_ in his heart, Gold takes the offered lifeline.

“Tea sounds lovely, Belle.”

She lets her hand drop from his as they enter the house, but in this moment Gold would happily follow anywhere she led. In the kitchen, they discover the boys clutching half-eaten cookies, and Belle rolls her eyes.

“I said put them in the Tupperware, not in your mouths!”

The genial mood in the kitchen is infectious, and as he sips his sweet tea and meets Belle’s eyes over the tops of their respective sons’ heads, he feels that this is something that can definitely keep happening.

 


End file.
